Re: [tcpm] IANA TCP options registry

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

Fernando Gont wrote:
...
>> Yes, a poll is useful. I have no idea who would "own" that process, or
>> where that info would be maintained. 
> 
> Hence my suggestion of an Informational RFC that could be revised now
> and then.

I think that writing RFCs - informational or not - that are known to be
useless in a short timeframe isn't productive.

The IETF is not an operations monitoring organization. However,
informational docs are a path to that. We should NOT have this be a WG
effort- at any level - unless it's in conjunction with a status change, IMO.

>> I don't think this is an IETF issue
>> *except* when it drives a decision to change status (to historic, e.g.).
>> At that point, the decision is what documents the usage.
> 
> I agree to some extent. But OTOH, lack of information may result in some
> options being deemed as unused/historic, and then e.g. filtered.

This info can feed into the IETF when needed, of course. But I don't see
where, how, or why the IETF should perform background monitoring per se.

>>>> I'm not saying it's not useful, but I just don't know who should "own"
>>>> or "endorse" this - the Internet doesn't have a compliance or deployment
>>>> monitoring function AFAICT.
>>> It doesn't look good to have all this options assigned that nobody (*)
>>> knows what they have been used for (if they have ever been used on the
>>> public Internet).
>> I agree that IANA can have better info that can indicate what the option
>> is, and that's easy AFAICT (gather the info, review it in TCPM and on
> 
> Would they really include a description if there's not document
> describing the use of such options?

A few words at best. If not, perhaps it'd be useful to try to describe
these options in an informational doc they can cite. If not, it's OK to
list them as experimental with no known documentation - we shouldn't
allocate them that way anymore, but what's done is done.

Joe